When doing a Web search using AOL, MSN or another search engine, is there a way to look at the results toward the end without going through the intermediate results 25 at a time? Let's say I get back 285 results, can I jump to number 225, for example? How can I skip to the middle or near the end?

Dennis King

When you click on a link that goes to the next page of results, you actually rerun the search with additional arguments that specify where to start the reporting. You can often determine which arguments are relevant by right-clicking on the Next link, choosing Copy shortcut, and pasting the resulting URL into Notepad. The arguments take the form name=value, with ampersands separating them. You can experiment by creating modified copies of the search URL and pasting them back into the browser.

Using this method, we determined that in a Google search, the arguments start= and num= control the starting result and the number per page. The following URL would search Google for my name and display 80 hits starting at number 300: www.google .com/search?q=neil+rubenking&num= 80&start=300. You may find that not all values are accepted. For example, you can't set num= to a value greater than 100. By default, Google omits results that appear to be duplicates; you can turn off this feature by appending &filter=0 to the search URL.

Related

Some additional sleuthing reveals that AOL's search lets you pick the starting page, but not the number per page, as in search.aol.com/aolcom/search?query=neil+rubenking&page=2. Once you've worked out which arguments to change, you can click on Next and then simply edit the URL in the Address bar.

MSN's search engine doesn't lend itself as easily to this type of manipulation. The starting number and page count are buried in a string of hard-to-decipher information such as search.msn.com/results.aspx?ps=ba%3d (0.30)0(.)0.......%26co%3d (0.15)4(0.1)3.200.2.5.10.1.3.%26pn%3d1% 26rd%3d0%26&q=neil+rubenking&ck_sc=1&ck_af=0. Still, we were able to determine that the number following ba (the 30 in ba%3d(0.30)) is the beginning number, and the number after co (the 15 in co%3d(0.15)) is the count.

About the Author

Neil Rubenking served as vice president and president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years when the IBM PC was brand new. He was present at the formation of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and served on its board of directors. In 1986, PC Magazine brought Neil on board to handle the torrent of Turbo Pascal tips submitted b... See Full Bio

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